Recipient: Glen Camarda

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, this documentary photography project will document the 2023 January flood event recovery & rebuilding process in the affected communities of Merced & Planada. I will also share the experiences of those affected directly, what challenges those citizens experienced, how those challenges are met and who is helping with the overwhelming rebuilding process. More awareness is needed to help educate & prepare citizens for future catastrophic events within Merced County. I will also feature short audio interviews (for social media) & captions next to the final images that enable affected citizens to tell their powerful story in their own words. This project will be a combination of a mobile physical print show & social media posts.

Recipient: Shawn Overton

With support from the Heartland Creative Corps, I will create a photography project called the Beauty of Dreams. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" is one of Eleanor Roosevelt's most famous quotes, but she never said it. While it's now commonly used to inspire the young, it originated as the slogan for a get-rich-quick scheme aimed at low-income college students. It's an example of the disconnect between the future we sell and the future we actually create through selfish actions. The Beauty of Their Dreams is a photography project that highlights this disconnect. The final images will be beautiful at a glance, but terrifying on closer inspection. They will feature portraits of dancers (with a particular emphasis on ballet), who will represent the potential of future generations, embedded in backgrounds consisting of ecological disasters and social problems created by the actions of previous generations.

Recipient: Cheryl Lockett

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, participants will create art in the form of storytelling, songwriting, music, painting, drawing and installation of portable murals on canvas panels to showcase their works of art in concert, publicly. There will be 20-50 collaborating participants of community members, artists, and liaisons working on the project, bringing participants of diverse background together to discuss similarities and differences in culture, environmental concerns and how to overcome some of the issues of that involve health, food, disaster, using the arts as a conduit to channel their ideas into art and tell their story. The project will be executed in four rural communities where communities will be utilized to tell their stories through the arts.

Recipient: Charles Perez

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, this project will help create a shift in attitude and readiness of community members to engage in behaviors that support water and energy conservation. The Need for The Project: Climate change is clearly a part of our world reality these days. The need to act to support water and energy conservation and lower our carbon footprint is more critical than ever. The need for water conservation is key to our health, agriculture and to the very sustenance of our very lives. The need for energy conservation is key to lowering our carbon footprint and combatting climate change. The need to reduce our dependence on oil and moving to more passive energy sources, such as solar and wind, plus shifting to electric versus gas driven vehicles are key to a cleaner and healthier environment for California. Our proposed mural will illustrate and address these issues both visually and verbally to communicate, educate and inspire the surrounding community.

Recipient: Ian Whitaker

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, FACES OF RURAL MERCED is a photo documentary that seeks to document a once sleepy part of the state has been transformed by the growth of the agricultural industry, increased urbanization and a constant flow of immigrants. This project will focus on the people whose lives they have impacted the most: those who live and work in Merced’s rural communities. Among the communities featured in the project are indigenous Yokuts living in poverty in Santa Nella, the generations of Portuguese families in Stevinson and the Sikh farmers in the north county.

Recipient: Ruben Sanchez

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, Harvesting Hands Across the Valley will consist of 16 fully-colored posters of individuals of all walks of life in the Central Valley community. Such as campesinos and the different aspects of their employment in the farming fields. Both the Hispanic and Hmong community from ages 18-60 years old will be represented in these works. I as the artist of the project will be creating the imagery as well as color separating and screen printing these posters individually, and depending on the imagery it will carry a positive slogan or phrase. A total of 800 posters will be screen printed to be shown. All of which will be later displayed in Migrant camps, flea markets/farmer’s markets, schools, libraries, and galleries.

Recipient: Merced American Legion Post 83

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, The Honor Mural is a project designed to honor the local Veterans of the five military branches of service, prior to the Space Corps. The project will focus on civic engagement through education, and community involvement through a public unveiling of the mural in the summer of 2024. Veterans can be overlooked and underappreciated by the public. They serve in our armed forces, but are only celebrated a few times a year, mostly in parades. The Honor Mural will show the public that our service men and women can be celebrated every day. The mural will honor local service men and women, and will educate the public at the same time.

Recipient: Oscar A Torres Juarez

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, this project will entail the creation of an all ages graphic novel featuring a boy and his grandfather immigrating to the United States from Mexico. Emphasizing historical, contemporary, and local images, the visual journey will be accompanied by a simple but profound story. The graphic novel will be bilingual: English and Spanish. There will be community events and collaboration with established local groups and organizations to help distribute the books for free.

Recipient: Lauren Mccue-Bryx

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, we will feature a performance of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard’s Cowboy Mouth. Based on the lives of Smith and Shepard in 1971, this part autobiographical play highlights artists who struggle to make ends meet. Smith later emerges as a trailblazing American punk rock poet and performance artist, and Shepard becomes a successful screen actor as well as a playwright who champions the American underclass. Our artistic approach includes fostering actor effectiveness in projecting stage properties abstractly and developing sophisticated non-verbal forms of communication. For instance, we seek to explore the intersections of performance and autobiographical roleplaying in post-pandemic environments where issues of mental health, emotional and physical abuse, substance abuse, and suicide have become increasingly invisible or marginalized.

Recipient: Joseph T Hypes

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, I will create/finish the horror whodunit film named "The Plague Doctor" filmed in different cities in Merced County. The Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly caused a great deal of tension and division in many communities, including Merced County. With differing opinions on issues such as wearing masks and following pandemic-related rules, it's not surprising that some individuals and groups have become polarized and entrenched in their views. This can create a toxic environment where people are not willing to listen to others and where cooperation and collaboration are difficult to achieve. The Plague Doctor film offers a unique take on the pandemic by using the character of the Plague Doctor, a historical figure associated with pandemics in the past, to represent Covid-19. Through satire and horror elements, the film aims to explore opposing viewpoints and highlight the absurdity and danger of extreme positions.

Recipient: Karina Turner

With support from the California Heartland Creative Corps, Karina Turner will film a documentary about Yoshi Kubo, a farmer and American citizen from the Merced County town of Ballico. Under the World War II Japanese exclusion order, he and his family were forcibly evicted from their farm and evacuated to an internment camp in Colorado with little notice. Only through collaboration with an unexpected ally from outside their community could they hold out any hope that their land and livelihood were not lost to them forever. Internees were required to accept conscription into military combat. Yoshi, bitter about being stripped of his land, refused to submit, arguing that as a farmer, he could best serve the war effort farming under an agricultural deferment. This courageous stand resulted in his incarceration in federal prison for the duration of the war. In his letters, Yoshi revealed he lived by the maxim “row, don’t drift,” choosing the path that he felt was right, even though it was a harder one, and even if he had to walk it alone.

Recipient: Manuel Moreno

With support from Heartland Creative Corps I will write The Santa Nella Blues, which will be my fifth published book, and third collection of poems. I will write about life here, the people, the poverty and place, of Santa Nella in Merced County. I am requesting funds for time to write, and to pay for laying out and printing 300 copies, of which I'll donate copies to the Merced Multi-Cultural Center, Livingston Historical Museum, and distribute to the Merced County Libraries and Santa Nella Library, and plan to have a series of public readings within the county.

Recipient: City of Merced

With support from the Heartland Creative Corps, the City of Merced aspires to create job opportunities for local artists to tell stories about Merced’s history and culture that will create conversations between community members with different backgrounds and cultures. This project will provide mural artists and sculptors the resources to paint large scale murals and sculptures, in otherwise under appreciated and at times blighted areas to strengthen our community’s character.

Recipient: Jasmine Diaz

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, this project transforms public spaces through two art murals in Merced County that will inspire social justice and community engagement. The murals in this proposal are designed to bring public awareness related to conservation, relief, and recovery to all who see the murals. The mural concept is titled “A Sisters Garden” and will incorporate elements to depict a way of life that is harmonious and balanced with nature. The murals will be illustrative reminders of the importance of sustainability, the interconnections of all living things, and the support of building sisterhood. The goal of this project is to bring together five paid artists that will work and engage students, elders, youth, and Black, Indigenous Woman of Color (BIWoC) and woman-identifying community members. Artists and community members will contribute to creating a piece of public art that celebrates their cultures, and values while connecting community members and artists.

Recipients: Awahnichi

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, I will write, record, perform, and distribute an album utilizing local artists. The album will share the history and stories/myths of the Yosemite Valley/Southern Sierra Miwuk and shed light on the Tribe’s respect for the natural environment in addition to the Tribe’s attempt and continued fight for Federal Recognition. The project will also provide individuals in the lower quartile communities within California with free live musical performances and access to free copies of the physical recorded album. The Need Access to obtainable live performance: With larger companies purchasing local venues, tickets have become unobtainable due to the extreme rising costs of tickets and surcharges. Increased costs, combined with local venues closing, has significantly reduced access to affordable live music in communities that are struggling financially. Without the live music experience, communities are producing less and less artists that write and perform original music. By providing live music at no cost to these communities, we can inspire others to form bands and take the stage!

Recipient: Dawn Trook

With support from Heartland Creative Corps, Water Ways will be an interactive, immersive theater experience exploring the history of water in Merced County and the ways human development has been destructive, both for the environment and for us. This event, designed to be portable and performed at schools and in parks, will be a collaboration between producer, writer, and performer Dawn Trook and designer, artist, and experience-creator Valerie Nicole Bose. Trook will write/create a one-woman show in which Water serves as the main character of the play. This work will educate youth about the ways developers, infrastructure, and leadership have been major contributors to the water-related crises our county faces. Home and personal water conservation will be presented, and, especially because some of our community members do not have steady access to a home water supply, actions presented to counteract water emergencies will include social justice acts, civic engagement, and sustainability practices that will help shift the values of leadership and the economic powers of environmentally-destructive corporations.

Recipient: Merced Center For The Performing Arts

With support from the Heartland Creative Corps, The We Are Merced project will be a Playhouse Merced community engagement initiative that showcases the very diverse, historic cultures and artistic talents of Merced County residents and artistic groups, with a focus on hiring 90 local performers and engaging the communities as volunteers and patrons. The We Are Merced project will feature approximately 12-16 highly experienced, performing individuals, troupes, and groups reflecting the various cultures of Merced County, including Hmong, Laotian, Southeast Asian, Latino, Portuguese, African, Irish dancers, singers, and poetry storytellers among others.